Rupert Goold, 38, is an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the artistic director of Headlong Theatre. After studying English at Trinity College, Cambridge, Goold directed at the Salisbury Playhouse and the Royal and Derngate Theatres, Northampton, until 2005, before joining Headlong the following year. In 2007 he directed Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear, worked with Harold Pinter and Michael Gambon on No Man’s Land and made his musical-directing debut with Oliver! at the London Palladium. The same year he won an Olivier Award for best director for his production of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart. (A film of the production, also directed by Goold, will be aired on BBC Four in December.) Since then Goold has directed the musical satire Enron (2009) and Earthquakes in London (2010) at the National, both Headlong productions, and is about to open the RSC season at the Roundhouse with Romeo and Juliet, which runs from November 30 until January 1. He lives in London with his wife, the actress Kate Fleetwood, their son, Raphael, five, and daughter, Constance, four months.

Daily routine I tend to do the breakfast shift and take Raph to school, then I go to rehearsals for 10am. When you’re in the rehearsal period the day is quite structured, but it gets a whole lot more intense and stressful in the period leading up to the production.

Lording it My grandmother’s father was captain of Somerset, so cricket is in my DNA. I’m not very good at it, but I love to watch. When I was 16 my dad nominated me for MCC membership, and 20 years later some old duffer died so I got to become a member – signified by this book (pictured). I go to Lord’s only about once a year, but I thought, 'I’ve waited for so long I can’t give it up now.’ I also like it because it’s one of the few places where I get called 'young man’ on the door.

War relics I’ve got a whole box of cards from the opening night of Enron on Broadway, which are like mementos from a war zone because it was so grizzly – it completely bombed with the critics and had to close early. But among the cards I was given this Enron share (pictured), which I find quite funny because it’s completely worthless. The production was just as good as the London one, and we had lots of savvy people clamouring to invest in it, but it just didn’t work. That’s the great thing about theatre: you are always dabbling in risk.

Wedding ring I constantly fiddle with whatever ring I’m wearing at the time, all the way through rehearsals, and always end up losing it. For the press night of The Glass Menagerie (2007) I was sitting at the back of the stalls fiddling with my ring when it fell off and rolled right under the seats. I was on my hands and knees when all the critics were leaving. So when Kate and I got married I told her not to buy me an expensive ring because she’d be upset when I lost it. In the end we just blessed this ring (pictured), which cost about £5 from somewhere on Tottenham Court Road, and, amazingly, nine years later I still have it.

Geeky kid I was a geek at school, and when my daughter was born, Lucy Prebble, who wrote Enron, said, 'I hope she’s beautiful but not too beautiful,’ and I know exactly what she means. I really treasure the feeling of being relatively socially excluded through my teenage years and I think it is good for your character.

First edition One of the first plays that I put on professionally, at Salisbury, was an adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, in 1997, and I was really proud of it. About a year later my godmother gave me this first edition (pictured) that she’d found in a bookshop in Henley. I’m unmaterialistic, but books are things that I really hold on to.

Unfinished business After the Greene I directed my first professional Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, in 1998, which started in Greenwich then toured Britain, and it was where I first met Kate – she was playing Juliet. I was working with the loveliest bunch of people but it got really bad reviews and it’s always felt like unfinished business for me. It was also the first play I acted in at school – I played Balthazar, Romeo’s manservant – so I always give the poor actor who plays him loads of notes. I think Romeo and Juliet is the hardest of the Shakespeares because you have to believe that they’re in love.

Football theatrics Arsenal was my local team when I was growing up, but I didn’t really like the culture of the team and didn’t like the boys in my class who were fans. It all changed when Arsène Wenger arrived in 1996 and I started to love the team. I find so many similarities between manager and theatre director, like do you use carrot or stick to encourage star acts, and how do you establish a sense of team in a disparate group?

Evenings out I ought to go to the theatre more than I do (I go about two nights a week) but I have parental guilt if I go out too much and I try to get back to read the kids a story. Then I often have scripts to read, but the one thing I’m really hooked on is Mad Men – we have the box set so we’re ploughing through that. I can’t imagine many theatre directors not keeping up with popular culture and I find shows such as Big Brother completely compelling. I think these past 10 years of reality television have been really good for theatre because it challenges the concept of naturalism.

Acting up I’ve always liked graphic novels and comics, especially Batman: The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, where the Joker’s character was really developed. I find the Joker fascinating, and now my son is really into Batman, too, so we take this little toy (pictured) everywhere with us and do a lot of role playing. He always wants to be Batman and I’m always the Joker.